


Ink Stains

by boxoftheskyking



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gen, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 17:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/pseuds/boxoftheskyking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The first thing Stiles thinks is that it’s strange to cut yourself with a nail if you’re in a kitchen surrounded by knives.</p>
<p>The second thing Stiles thinks is that that is a terrible thing to think and he should go throw up."</p>
<p>-------<br/>Stiles finds Derek at a low point, and does his best. Which isn't too bad, considering he has no idea what he's doing.<br/>Merry Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ink Stains

“Derek! Hey! Where are you hiding?”

Stiles hefts his bag higher on his shoulder, hesitating in the doorway. It’s not that he’s scared, really. Just. He’s never come here without an express reason. Or an invitation. And the house isn’t so much a house as barely-cauterized wound. Not burnt and ashy and ridiculous like the Hale house, but he swears he can feel Isaac’s father watching him from the shadows. It’s good that they have a home, it is. He’s not sure why it has to be  _this_  home … but it’s not really his business.

He steps across the threshold, sticking close to the walls as he pokes his head around corners.

“Hey, you home? I’m just stopping by. As you can tell. By me being here. Stopped. By. Um. No one heard from you yesterday. You know. Christmas. Um. Isaac’s at Boyd’s. Which you know already because of course you do. But I don’t like the idea of people alone on Christmas. Even if they don’t do the Christmas thing. Which is, um, probably kind of invasive and problematic. But that’s me, I guess, in a nutshell. Ha. Um. So this is me stopping by.”

He hears nothing, no response, but doesn’t leave. He keeps going through the house until he reaches the kitchen and freezes, breathless in the doorway.

 

Derek is there, kneeling on the floor in front of a row of cabinets. Stiles should run to him or call out or something, say “Stop, no, no, stop, what are you doing, no,” but he’s stuck in the doorway, fingers of one hand digging into the doorjamb.

Derek is kneeling on the floor in torn sweatpants and a dirty undershirt, digging into the meat of his arm. His left hand is open on his knees and he is digging into his bicep with a bent nail.

The first thing Stiles thinks is that it’s strange to cut yourself with a nail if you’re in a kitchen surrounded by knives.

The second thing Stiles thinks is that that is a terrible thing to think and he should go throw up.

Derek’s carving into his skin, over and over, the same five letters. L A U R A, over and over, watching the wounds close and slicing them back open. Stiles thinks that is has to scar, at some point. Some scar tissue has to happen. That’s what happens to skin. He has to be dizzy, right? Blood loss. That makes you dizzy.

He should have called out by now, but it’s mesmerizing, the trickle of blood running and stopping, skin sliding closed, tearing open, sliding closed. Like seaside. Tide. In out in out. Tides respond to the moon, too. 

“Derek,” he breathes, and pushes himself off the doorframe and into the room. He trips over his feet and stumbles into a squat, defensive, just in case Derek lashes out. He doesn’t, just blinks up with big, young, vacant looking eyes. 

“Stiles,” he says simply, voice loud in the empty room. He’s paused his carving, the nail still stuck in his arm and the skin trying to close around it. “I’m a little bit crazy, I think. Yeah.” 

He shrugs, the movement pulling his flesh against the metal, tearing it again. He slumps back against the cabinets and his head rolls along the wood. “It happens.”

“Derek.” Stiles reaches out and covers his hand, gently, guiding the nail out of his skin. He takes it from loose fingers and sets it on the ground. They both watch silently as the skin closes up. Derek makes a little jerk, almost a retch, and when Stiles looks he’s got both lips sucked between his teeth, biting them so the skin turns white.

“You miss her.”

He nods, eyes shut.

“I know. Man, I know. But you can’t—” He finds a roll of paper towel under the sink and wets it, wiping down the arm.

“Can you leave it?” Derek asks, but he’s already washed the skin clean.

“Listen, Derek—”

“I belong to her. I used to belong—” He fists his hands against the floor, grinding his knuckles in. “I don’t belong to—”

“Hey, cut that out. You belong here. You have every right to be—”

“ _To_!” he snarls eyes flashing open. “Belong  _to_. There isn’t a point if you don’t belong to anyone. That’s what’s— That where the  _reason_  comes from.”

Stiles sits back on his heels, keeping a safe distance. _Unexpected_ would be an understatement. But if there’s one thing he’s apparently good at, it’s dealing with the unexpected.

“Okay. Okay, you know what? No. You’ve got it wrong.” He turns to his backpack, digs through the front pouch. “Here. You want a mark? You want to know who you belong to? You can’t belong to the dead. You don’t do them any good. There’s no good in that. Here.” He takes Derek’s other arm, though both appear uninjured, and pulls the cap off his pen with his teeth. 

“Here,” he mumbles around the pen cap. He writes I S A A C down the right bicep, going back over the lines where the ink fades. It’s a crappy Bic ballpoint, not as smooth as a felt-tip would be, and he’s sure it hurts. The skins flares red when he has to scratch the letters over and over. But it clears up in seconds and the ink remains. He scratches E R I C A down over the fold of his elbow, stretching onto the pale skin of his forearm.

“See. You belong to them now. That’s what’s important.”

He switches arms, running a thumb over the phantom lines of Laura’s name. He thinks for a second and then writes B O Y D over the space. Derek hisses, and Stiles meets his eyes. Derek looks back down at his arms and says nothing.

“That’s right. Not just them, though.” He writes S C O T T down the left forearm, holding tight when Derek flinches. “Whether you like it or not. And that means—” He turns the arm and writes A L L I S O N. 

Derek snarls and pulls his arm away. Stiles doesn’t back up, just looks at him patiently. Derek calms, not looking him in the eye, and trails a finger down the fresh row of letters. Stiles takes the hand, pulls his right arm straight, and scrawls J A C K S O N and L Y D I A side by side. He thinks for a moment, then scratches, in small letters P E T E R across the back of his hand. Derek grunts, and Stiles thinks it could be interpreted as a laugh.

He grins. “Can’t choose the family, right? That’s who you belong to. Look at all of that. How could you forget?”

Derek shrugs again, turning his arms this way and that, still something absent in his eyes. Stiles bites the inside of his cheek, then grabs the left hand scrawling his own name across the tender skin of his wrist before he loses his nerve.

“I guess,” he says quietly. “But don’t, you know, make a thing about it.”

Derek says nothing, just runs a thumb over the ink. 

“I’m really not good at this,” Stiles says softly. Both of them are staring at Derek’s arms, his knees, his hands. Anywhere but at each other. “I’m sorry, man. It’s a stupid idea. I don’t know what to— I mean. You deserve better than me right now. This isn’t my— I’m not good at this.”

“None of them—” Derek’s voice cracks and he swallows hard, clenching his fists. “None of them want— You can’t belong to somebody who doesn’t want you.” He touches Boyd and Erica’s names. “Gone.” Scott and Allison’s. “Never.” Peter’s. “Gone.” Isaac’s. “I don’t know.” He breathes a half-chuckle. “Quiet. Someplace else.” 

Stiles grabs his left wrist, quickly, covering his own name. “Here,” he says simply. “Right here.”

“Stiles—”

“I’m right here. Belong to me, if you want. You can. Be my— Belong to me.”

Derek opens his mouth to say something, closes it, looks Stiles in the eye. He looks too wide open, and Stiles isn’t sure which of them is about to cry, so he moves his free hand to the back of Derek’s neck and pulls himself closer, too close to see each other clearly. His chin is kind of digging into Derek’s shoulder, but he’s not hearing any complaints.

“You can belong to me, for now,” he whispers again. “I think I’d like that. That could be good.” 

Derek turns his wrist in Stiles’ grip, stretching his fingers to get a tentative hold on Stiles’ arm. They hold for a second, barely touching and still, before Stiles pulls back and blinks his vision clear.

“But, I mean, that doesn’t sound healthy.” His voice is too loud for the moment, and that gives him comfort. “I mean, I’m pretty sure you could read a lot into that kind of language. You know. You’re autonomous or whatever. Don’t look at me like that, I do actually go to school. Oh, hey!” He scrambles for his pen and grins up at Derek, who looks a bit dazed. 

He reaches out and scratches D E R E K over the exposed collarbone. Derek looks down at his chest, raising one eyebrow. 

“See? Before anyone else, that’s who you belong to. Easy. Fixed it.” Derek blinks at him. “Ta-da.” Stiles does a lopsided kind of jazz-hands at Derek’s torso.

“I can’t tell if that’s really corny or really confusing,” Derek rasps out. 

Stiles shrugs and grins at him again. “It’s the thought that counts. Come on.” Stiles stands, joints popping, and scowls a little when Derek unfolds in one fluid movement. “We should clean up.”

He starts to turn away, then stops and runs a finger over his handiwork, each word. Derek lets him. “That’s the thing,” he starts, half to himself. “Sometimes you have to see it in writing to get it.”

“What about you?” Derek asks, catching his wrist as it brushes over his chest.

“Me?” Stiles pulls back and spreads his arms. “I’m an open book.”

Derek gives him a long look, and he scratches his nose, feeling awkward for the first time since coming in. 

“You have ink on your nose,” Derek says, and turns around to get a sponge from the sink. Stiles scrubs at his face with his sleeve, and refuses to acknowledge Derek’s chuckle from the other side of the room.


End file.
